Calling Sacred Ones Home - the Challenge of Repatriating Sacred Indigenous Objects

A friendly Super Bowl wager between two art galleries, one from Seattle and the other from Denver, is innocent enough right? Well, it gained attention for the wrong reasons when the Seattle Art Museum tried to wager a ceremonial Raven mask from the Nuxalk Nation in Bella Coola. Because of an apparent resemblance to the Seahawks emblem, the Museum wagered  the Raven, a highly honoured being in the cosmology and clan system of many coastal First Nations.  Due to the Nuxalk Nation's protests of the use of the mask, the museum pulled the mask from the wager. Though not the largest controversy regarding First Nations and NFL logos, the use of the Nuxalk mask against its spiritual purpose is all too common a scenario for many indigenous sacred objects in the hands of collectors and museums.

 

The Fog of History

The Nuxalk mask was never meant to be shown in public, but rather held a place of high honour in the ceremonial lives of the Nuxalk Nation, used as a Chief's mask in sacred dances. So how did it end up as a sideshow to one of the biggest shows on earth? To understand how the Nuxalk mask got into the controlling hands of the Seattle Art Museum requires a consideration of the dubious and foggy history of Indigenous artifact collection and selling.   

Since first contact, the appetite for indigenous artifacts in North America has never been satiated.  Though present-day trade takes place on relative even ground, the origins of this industry were unregulated and transactions hardly ever recorded. Though there is a presumption that many objects left communities as a result of a fair trade, the history is fraught with collectors taking advantage of the marginalized positions of Indigenous communities. The inequality of bargaining power between First Nations and settlers, the enactment of laws that aided the seizure of items, and at times outright theft plagued this practice.  The period between 1880 and 1950 were especially difficult for West Coast communities, as diseases like small pox and tuberculosis wreaked havoc on populations and led to a mistaken belief that the collection of sacred objects was the only way to preserve many indigenous cultures.  Further, government policies outlawing traditional ceremonial practices led to countless artifacts being seized from communities. For example, the Kwakwa̱ka̱ʼwakw had sacred potlatch items and gifts confiscated by the federal government when the laws against the potlatch were enacted. The surrendered items were in turn were sold to private collectors or museums. 

Common law principles of ownership that favour the possessors of 'abandoned' property led to further appropriation of cultural artifacts.  For example, the G'psgolox pole, a ceremonial pole of the Haisla people, was taken in 1929 under dubious circumstances. An indian agent deemed the village where the pole stood to be ‘vacant’ and cut the pole down as a gift to a Swedish diplomat.  The pole subsequently found its way to a Swedish museum. Of course, the village was far from abandoned., as the community moved seasonally from village site to village site. This would be the same as going to Muskoka or Hornby Island in the winter and pilfering cottagers’ possessions.  I will leave you to figure out how or why the practices of the Haisla Nation were viewed different than the contemporary practice of millions of Canadians.

Legal Solutions

The legal arena has been a limited avenue in the move to repatriate ceremonial and cultural items to their home communities.  The largest barrier is the bare ground many communities have to grasp upon legally. The exchange of objects, dubious or otherwise, was rarely ever documented in writing.  The movement of the Nuxalk mask from community to collector occurred under the amnesia of history.  There is no record of the mask leaving the community, yet somehow it ended up in the hands of John H. Hauberg, grandson of the founder of the Weyerhauser logging company. Hauberg donated the mask to the museum.

Whether sold, traded, stolen or seized, the fog of history freezes a community from making proper  reparations for the loss.  It not only has effects on potential common law or civil law actions. It effectively halts traditional customary law and practices as well.  Many indigenous cultures have a complexity of ceremonies based on healing and retribution for losses internal to their communities. Who is responsible for the loss of the sacred object is germane to the next legal step taken, whether through an Indigenous legal system or the common law system. With no one to hold responsible, proper reparations for the loss of a sacred one is withheld. 

 Even with proof that lead to a probable cause that the exchange of an artifact from its home community to a museum or collector was unlawful, other barriers exist.  A large one is financial. The high cost in seeking legal remedies is a price that individuals and communities can simply not afford. A third barrier is simply identification. Artifacts held by private collectors and in many cases those stored in museums are hidden from the world. Museums are not required to contact the originating communities of the artifacts they hold.  Remember the G'psgolox pole?  It was only by chance that a member of the Haisla Nation identified the pole in a Swedish museum, spurring on negotiations between the museum and the Haisla to bring it home.

A final barrier is the lack of legislation surrounding the repatriation of ceremonial artifacts.  Alberta, with its First Nations Sacred Ceremonial Artifacts Repatriation Act, is one of the few jurisdictions to have laws governing the repatriation of indigenous artifacts. The act was spurred on by and has resulted in the repatriation of sacred bundles to the Blackfoot communities of Southern Alberta. Lacking the legislation, many museums have taken an active role to develop their own repatriation protocols. The development of these protocols is becoming increasingly a necessity for museums, as communities continue to call for their sacred ones to come home.

The Breath of Life and Ornamental Slavery

Canada is a multi-juridical country. Complete with the common and civil law traditions inherited from Britain and France, it is blanketed with Indigenous legal systems across the country. Complicating repatriation efforts are conflicts that arise between the wishes of museums and Indigenous legal traditions. Consider the G’psgolox pole. The museum would return the pole only under the condition that the Haisla construct a museum-like facility to house the pole.  This went against the community’s custom of letting the pole go back to the earth once it has succumbed to the natural elements. Given the breath of life when it is completed and lifted, a pole is considered a living, breathing thing that is carrying its own life. To house it in a museum was to remove the pole from the cycle of life. Such quiet indignities are barely understood by a Canadian public, nor a museum curator, as the community’s traditional practice with poles runs counter-intuitive to museum and collector goals of preservation. 

Yet to the traditional holders of ceremonial objects, neglecting the spiritual value of an object to preserve its ornamental value is akin to slavery. Museums and collectors have put a price on a spirit, enslaving it from the role it was birthed into. This ornamental slavery is only something a few will understand.  To the traditional holders of ceremonial objects, the wager by the Seattle Art Museum strikes at a deep, painful and embarrassing indignity that is wished to stop. But first, why its strikes so deep must be understood.